Page 99 of We Chase Shadows

‘It comes back on you, it comes back on me, see?’ says the young man.

‘Well, that’s the risk you take in your industry,’ says Felicity. ‘That’s what the money is for. There are other alleys where I can buy other guns, you know.’

In those panto negotiations – thirty-five years ago, goodness me – Felicity had known she was in a strong position. She asked for £8,000 a week, accommodation of at least four-star standard and dispensation allowing Barry Westover to present national weather bulletins three lunchtimes a week.

The producer of the panto, a woman called Daphne, who was married to one of the Bay City Rollers, had laughed at Felicity’s demands. The bobsleigher was only getting £3,000, and he had a silver medal. Did Barry Westover have a silver medal, she wondered?

‘I don’t like selling to someone I don’t know,’ says the boy in the alley.

‘Go and sell it to someone you know, then,’ says Felicity. ‘Do you think Coca-Cola only sell to people they know?’

The key is this: never look like you need it. Always look as if you already have a foot out the door. Daphne said she could stretch to £4,000, a three-star hotel and no weather bulletins, as they would get in the way of rehearsals and local press requests.

The young man in the alley gives a small nod. Felicity can read him just like she read Daphne all those years ago. Doesn’t matter if it’s a handgun in a Portsmouth alley, or Aladdin at the Hexagon, Reading, the dance will always be the same. This young man has a gun to sell and there aren’t too many customers in Portsmouth. Someone else will need a gun at some point, but he has this woman in front of him right now, and she doesn’t look like a cop.

‘What’s it for? You want to kill your husband?’

‘Not married,’ says Felicity. ‘Not yet at least.’

Daphne had threatened to book another Widow Twankey, said she’d already had a conversation with Jack Jensen, the ventriloquist, and he was available.

The boy has made his mind up. ‘Okay. S’yours. Eight hundred though.’

‘We agreed five hundred,’ says Felicity.

Daphne should really have known that theatrical agents speak to each other all the time. Felicity knew for a fact that Jack Jensen – and his puppet, Rudolfo – had already signed up for Puss in Boots in Llandudno. Felicity called her bluff and said, ‘Very well, we shall try our luck elsewhere.’

‘Very well,’ says Felicity to the young lad in the alley. ‘I shall try my luck elsewhere.’

‘Seven hundred,’ says the young man.

Daphne had caved almost immediately, and the deal was struck on Felicity’s original terms. She wasn’t being greedy, she just knew the market rate. Just as the look in this young man’s eyes lets her know precisely the market rate for a second-hand gun on the streets of Portsmouth.

‘Five hundred is my best, I’m afraid,’ says Felicity. ‘But I will understand if that’s unacceptable to you.’

Felicity looks at him. What is he, seventeen? It breaks her heart a little to see a young boy having to try on such grown-up clothes. She could be his mother.

‘Okay, five hundred,’ says the young man. ‘But only because you remind me of my nan.’

Or grandmother, of course. Sometimes one forgets one’s age. In Felicity’s head she’s the same age she was when she was arguing with Daphne about what floor of the Reading Ramada Barry Westover should be on.

The young man hands her a small object wrapped in a tea towel. In return she hands him £500 in a buff envelope.

That was the easy bit done. Now, gun in hand, for the difficult bit.

You never know where life is going to take you. Meeting Tony was something she never could have foreseen. But she could have lost him just as easily.

The most important thing is to know your own worth. Never sell yourself short.

The young man disappears through a side door into Sammy’s Boxing gym and Felicity is suddenly alone, in an alley, with a gun, thinking about a man with bleached blond hair and a tattoo of an eagle.

Barry Westover was later disgraced, like so many of his generation, though his downfall was less usual than the others, having taken a bribe from a Saudi businessman to fake a weather forecast. Quite why the Saudi businessman had needed the world to believe that East Anglia was due fog over the bank holiday weekend was never divulged, but he had been prepared to pay Barry Westover £5,000 for his troubles. Money that Barry ended up having to pay to the Lowestoft Tourist Board in order to stave off court proceedings.

Felicity places the gun in her handbag and begins the walk back to Portsmouth & Southsea Station, a small piece of her willing someone to try and mug her.

Steve thinks somebody will try and get to Vern, which means that the man who attacked Tony – or this man Connor Brooks himself – might be paying a visit to the area. Felicity knows what they both look like now. She is looking forward to meeting either of them. She’s not fussy which.

Both of them? Well, wouldn’t that be a bonus?